


Dignity We Never Had

by Masu_Trout



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Clothed Sex, M/M, Nick Valentine's Day, Non-Penetrative Sex, Porn with Feelings, Robot Kink, Robot/Human Relationships, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 03:35:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9697823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: For a moment, Nick thought that would be the end of it; he'd called the bluff, he'd won, they could both go home and never speak of this again.By now, Nick should know better than to try and predict what Nate's going to do.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carmilla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmilla/gifts).



> Happy... uh, chocolate-unboxing, I suppose? I love these two, and I really hope you enjoy this.

“So,” Nate asked, “how's that paperwork coming along?”

Nick sighed and closed his eyes for a long moment, pressing the fingers of his flesh hand against the bridge of his nose. Nate was sitting in the corner of the agency, straddling the back of a chair with his arms folded on the headrest, and staring at Nick with his intent sniper's gaze. 

He'd been there for three hours, twenty-seven minutes, and thirty-three seconds. Nick knew that thanks to his internal chronometer—and also because it was incredibly difficult not to be aware of those eyes on him. If Nate ever wanted to settle down, he'd make a great addition to Diamond City's security team; no one would ever feel comfortable stealing anything with him watching.

Still. Nick was a detective, not some schmuck off the streets. He was better at dealing with stare-downs than most.

“Just cross-checking a few things,” he said. “Summer's a busy time of year for crime.”

“Mm, I bet.” Nate shrugged. “Must be some _really_ tough cases going on, if you're having to check files from forty years ago to solve them.”

Damn it. Nick had been hoping he wouldn't be able to read the dates from that far away. “Nate…” 

Nate said nothing, just kept looking at him.

It probably said something not-too-nice about his personality that when Nate had come in and said, _hey, can we talk?_ , his first reaction was to answer, _sure, once I'm done_ and then immediately do everything in his power to make sure he wouldn’t ever be done. Tempting to blame that little personality flaw on the original Nick, but that would be a cop-out—he was made of metal and plastic, he didn't need to eat or drink, he was all too used to being able to outlast any stand-off that came his way.

The usual strategy didn't work quite so well in this situation. Nate was a good man, a good fighter, a good, ah, _companion_ —and he was more persistent than a deathclaw tracking a wounded brahmin. 

Nick sighed. “Okay,” he said, “fine. You wanted to talk, so. here I am.” 

His pulse couldn't race, his stomach couldn't sink, his palms couldn't sweat… but his body was doing a good job of pretending otherwise. Sometimes he hated the original Nick for leaving him with these phantom sensations; they were so much more subtle than the actual pain he was programmed to be able to feel and all the worse for it.

He wasn't a detective for nothing. He had a pretty good idea where this conversation was going, and he'd been hoping to avoid it for as long as humanly (or synthly, in his case) possible.

These days, with the Institution gone and Sanctuary doing a pretty fair job of running itself, Nate had taken to joining Nick on cases whenever he could spare a few days away from Shaun. (Made him feel useful, as far as Nick could tell. He understood the urge.) After one particularly tough case involving a missing woman and a waylaid shipment of Nuka-Cola had _finally_ unraveled for them, Nick had taken one look at the elation in Nate's eyes, and he'd—well. 

He'd ended up pressing him against the nearest wall and kissing him until neither of them could breathe, until he could feel Nate panting and flushed under him. Until he could pretend he was a normal person with a normal life.

Nick had backed off as soon as he'd come back to his senses, apologized, and promised himself he'd never do anything like that again. 

(The next case they'd taken together had ended with one of Nick's hands in Nate's hair and the other stroking him off through all those layers of leather and fabric he wore.)

It was a stupid pattern, one Nick was too cowardly and weak to actually break, and now Nate was here to break it for him. He just hoped— _God_ , he hoped Nate would still be okay with talking to him after this. Half his friends these days were people he'd met through Nate; it was the most social he'd been in decades. It would be beyond stupid for him to ruin that because he couldn't keep his hands to himself.

Nate ran a hand through his hair, looking frustrated. His mouth opened, closed, opened once more—and finally the words exploded out. “Nick,” he said, “why the _fuck_ can't I touch you?”

“Um,” Nick said. He blinked, for once caught without words. None of the scripts he'd run through in his head had even come close to preparing him for a question like that. “What are you talking about?”

The glare Nate fixed him with could have melted down iron. “You're a smart man, Nick. Don't play stupid with me. You're fine with getting all over me when we're out working together, but the moment I try to put my hand near you it's like I'm covered in radroach guts. I went to touch your wrist the other day and you about broke your joint getting out of the way.”

He remembered the moment Nate was talking about well enough. They hadn't even been on a case then, Nate had just stopped by to say hello. He'd leaned over Nick's desk and reached down to adjust one of his jacket's cuffs, and Nick had just—moved, completely on instinct.

“It's the same thing when you kiss me. If I don't keep my hands planted to the wall, it's like you think I'm about to pull a knife and carve you up.” His voice went quieter, almost pleading. “I'm not—I'm not expecting fucking trust falls or anything, Nick, but this is getting ridiculous.”

Nate's words were like some sort of absurdist puzzle, the kind where the pieces were all there but the picture they formed didn't make any sense. “You're upset because you think I don't want you to hold me,” he said, half-expecting Nate to scoff. 

“Yeah,” Nate said, perfectly sincere.

“I know you like to play with scrap, Nate, but don't you think that's a bit much?”

He realized his mistake the moment the words were out of his mouth. Nate flinched back like he'd been struck, and then his face went sharp and cold as if all the liveliness had been sucked out of it. Without another word, he stood.

“Wait,” Nick said, desperate, “wait, Nate, _please_ —”

Halfway to the door, Nate stopped. He didn't move or turn around to look at Nick; his form was a statue planted in the middle of the office.

“I didn't mean it that way.” Nick sighed and tried to form his next words carefully. “It's all synthetic. Plastic tarp stretched over wire and steel struts. I might be a little more carefully-molded than the gen twos, but I'm a _lot_ closer to them than I am the modern synths you know.”

“And I'm pre-tanned leather over a whole bunch of weird squishy bits,” Nate responded. He still wasn't moving, but at least he hadn't tried to leave yet. “It's not about taking inventory.”

Finally, he sighed and turned around to look at Nick. His posture was still set in anger, but his face had melted from quiet fury to an expression so open it was almost difficult to look at. “If you don't want that, or if you—if you _can't_ get anything out of it, that's fine. I'm not going to pressure you. But…” He shrugged. “Maybe I'm just an old-fashioned idiot, but I don't want to be someone who uses you to get off every now and again. I like you too much for that.”

Nick felt his fear turn to churning anger somewhere deep inside his circuitry. It was easy for Nate to say that when he'd never actually had to see what was under the coat. He'd never woken up in a junkyard, feeling wrong in a way he couldn't describe, and then looked down to see nothing but featureless grey.

“Fine,” he snapped. He pushed his chair out from his desk, just far enough to open up some space, and spread his arms wide. The words came out rapid-fire, too quick to control. “You want to touch me? Be my guest.”

Nate paused, and for a moment Nick thought that would be the end of it—he'd called the bluff, he'd won, they could all go home and never speak of this again. But then he took one step forward, two, until he was standing over Nick's desk. He looked down, eyes fixed on Nick, and asked, “you're sure?”

If Nick had blood, or the veins to carry it, he'd be flushed red right about now. “Go for it,” he said, before he could second-guess his answer.

Nate leaned down and kissed him.

It was different than when Nick had initiated—then, he'd pushed Nate's hands down and away, kept a millimeter or two between their bodies and focused as hard as he could on not screwing up. 

Nate had no such reservations. He kept one hand on the desk to keep him balanced and the other pressed against Nick's skull just below his hat. The soft, consistent pressure of fingers rubbing back and forth over his scalp felt far stranger than it should have.

People had touched him before to hurt him or to heal him. Dr. Amari touched him when she helped sit him in the memory pods, and occasionally the people he rescued were scared and desperate enough to cling to him afterward. This steady touch, intimate in its gentleness, was something else entirely—the only thing he had to go on were those brief flashes of Nick's, and they were barely any help at all. 

(For one, he always had hair in those.)

Still. It was a good feeling. Nick opened his mouth to Nate, tried to keep himself steady even as his metal hand carved thin gouges into the wood of his desk.

After a moment, Nate pulled back. 

Nick blinked. His mouth was still parted and his skin felt warm where Nate had touched it. Before he could begin to react, Nate walked around the desk. He pushed the chair backwards to give him a little more room and then dropped to his knees in front of Nick.

“Ah,” Nick managed. That image alone—a figure kneeling between his legs, staring up at him with a warm smile—was more than enough to send a burst of phantom heat shivering through him.

Of course, the original Nick had never been with someone quite so _tall_ before. Or muscular, for that matter. Nate had taken to the wasteland shockingly well for a pre-war artifact; Nick only wished he could've adjusted so quickly.

“So,” Nate said, “you never did answer my question before.”

“The only question I remember is the one about touching, and I'm pretty sure I answered that one.” It was all Nick could do to keep himself from reaching out and running his fingers through that dark hair.

“Well, implied question.” Nate hesitated a moment before asking, “Is there something that feels good for you?”

“Oh. Right.” 

As far as Nick could tell he'd been programmed to feel as broad a range as possible, pain and pleasure alike. There were… places on his body that were sensitive: certain patches of skin seemed to hold sensors underneath, some wires reacted to touch so much more intensely than they should, artificial nerve endings sent dizzying scores of feedback when he pressed on them just right. 

When he was newer, he'd tried messing with them occasionally, but he'd always stopped before he got too far. There was an element of absurdity to it that his rational mind just couldn't get past. Something felt uniquely pathetic about a robot playing itself like an instrument to try and capture a pleasure it'd learned to want from a centuries-dead human's memories.

Saying all that would most likely kill the mood, though, and for all Nick could hardly believe this was happening he didn't want it to stop. Instead, he spread his legs a little wider and, with far more confidence than he felt, said, “you know, you make a pretty good detective yourself. I'm sure you can figure it out.”

Nate's answering smile was almost predatory. “ _Well_ ,” he murmured, “I'll be sure to investigate thoroughly, then.”

He leaned up to kiss Nick again and then slowly moved sideways, pressing his lips to Nick's skin as he went: the corner of his mouth, his cheek, the side of his neck. He hesitated for a moment at the spot where artificial flesh gave way to metal, then carefully took the open flap of skin into his mouth and ran his tongue along the ragged edge.

“ _Ah_!” Nick shuddered and cried out as a wave of pleasure hit him. _That_ couldn't possibly be intentional—the sensors embedded into the weave of his skin were picking up on the entirely unexpected sensation and translating it as best as they could manage.

Nate drew back. “Was that a good noise or a bad noise?”

“Good,” Nick said—or, rather, groaned. Right now his voice sounded raspy in a way that years of cigarettes hadn't managed. “Feels better than it has any right to.”

“Well,” Nate said, “I'm certainly not going to complain.” With that, he leaned back in and, much more slowly this time, closed his mouth around the edges of Nick's tattered neck once more.

It was all he could do to keep from crying out a second time. He wanted to lean into it, wanted to grab fistfuls of Nate's hair and pull him tight and keep him right there. The pleasure wasn't quite as intense now that he was expecting it, but it still left him shivering with want every time that warm tongue brushed against the exposed nerves. It was like being tickled, he supposed; worked a whole lot better when it was someone else doing it to you. He'd never felt anything like this while maintaining his body.

After some amount of time that Nick was happy to dub 'not long enough', Nate let go of the skin there with one last soft kiss. His fingers pressed against the front of Nick's chest, which felt quite nice until her suddenly realized that Nate was undoing his tie.

Before Nate could undo the knot, he clasped both hands over his and held them still. “The door—” 

“Ellie locked it when she left.”

Right. Of course she had; Nick had been so determined to bury his head in his papers and not take in anything going on around him that he'd barely even noticed when the end of her shift hit.

Still, he didn't move. His hands stayed clasped over Nate's. Nick almost felt as though he _couldn't_ lift them.

“Nick,” Nate said finally, “unless you're secretly sixteen radroaches in a trench coat, I _really_ doubt anything you've got under there is going to surprise me.”

“Twenty-three, actually, but good guess. I needed an extra seven to work all the fiddly little joints.”

For that, Nick was treated with the rare sight of Nate laughing and rolling his eyes at the same time. “I'm serious. If I were about to run off screaming into the evening light, I'm pretty sure I would've done it already.”

“Shame. Diamond City'd be able to keep itself entertained for a decade on gossip like that.”

“I'll have to apologize to Piper later.” 

He wasn't moving away, but he wasn't forcing his hand either—the choice was very clearly Nick's. That gave him courage enough to pull his hands away and say, “fine. But… stick to the shirt this time, okay?” 

It was probably best not to start by showing off his featureless, children's-toy crotch; that was the sort of thing one built up to over time, Nick thought.

“I can agree to that,” Nate said, his voice low with heat. His deft fingers worked at the knot of the tie, quickly unraveling it. He paused to press his nose against the fabric before tossing it to the side.

“Smell good?” Nick asked.

Nate wrinkled his nose. “Like cigarette smoke. Same as everything else you own.”

“Nice thing about having plastic lungs is that I don't have to worry about cancer.” Though it did mean he had to occasionally go through and clean his pseudo-organs from the inside to keep everything in working order. Nothing like sticking a scrub brush down your throat to make you question your reason for being. 

The belt of his trenchcoat was next. As ridiculous as Nick knew it was—he had nothing for a belt to hide anymore, for Chrissakes—the sight of it sent a little shiver of lust running down his spine. Something about the way Nate worked was impossible to look away from. Didn't matter whether he was fixing up a set of power armor, hacking a terminal, or seducing an obsolete-model synth.

Once the buckle was undone, Nate pushed at Nick's shoulders until the trench coat was off his body and hanging on the back of the chair. Being in nothing but a shirt and slacks left him feeling strangely exposed. 

At least he still had his hat.

The buttons went slowly. For each one he worked open, Nate pulled the fabric a little farther apart and kissed the newly revealed skin. Nick's skin wasn't nearly as sensitive as a human's, but the sensation was still _more_ —more than he knew how to deal with, more than he'd ever let himself want.

Finally, when the last button was undone, Nate stretched back up and tugged at his shirt until it joined the jacket.

“Careful,” Nick said, “it's hard to find replacements these days.”

“Don't worry, detective, I'll make sure to keep you looking dashing.” Nate smiled. “Wouldn't want all those ne'er-do-wells out there not to respect you properly.”

Nick snorted. It was better to keep talking, better to let that easy banter distract him from what he knew Nate was taking in.

He hadn't been kidding when talked about the older-gens; for all he might be a prototype, a bridge between, there was no question which he took after physically. The entirety of his chest was one smoothly-carved hunk of plastic, marred here and there by decades of rough living. He had no navel, no nipples, no lines of muscle to demarcate the different points of his body. The bulk of the Institute's work had gone into his face—the more of his body he showed, the clearer the inhumanity became.

And, of course, the damage didn't help. He'd always taken a certain amount of pride in his scuffs and tears—honest wear from honest work, and anyway it was a better attitude to have than the alternative—but that was hard to keep with _Nate_ looking at him so intently. 

The flesh of his right hand was gone almost all the way up to the elbow, exposing the rough metal approximations of bone and sinew that kept him moving. A series of short, parallel tears ran across his chest, each about three inches long or so and inexpertly stitched back together with fishing line. Nick had done that work himself after a bad run-in with a raider gang fifteen or so years back. He'd been afraid he might lose the skin of his torso entirely otherwise.

Nick let his gaze drift towards the side of the room. “So,” he said, trying his best not to sound too embarrassingly tense, “there you have it.”

Before he could say another word, Nate's hands were on his skin. “Oh,” he murmured as he pressed his palms flat against Nick's torso. “You're so warm.”

 _Don't squirm,_ Nick ordered himself, _Stay collected._ The sensation of human hands against his chest was entirely unexpected, and if Nate just moved a little bit upward he might be able to rub against one of those particularly interesting sensors.

“Yeah.” He nodded shakily. “The systems are, _ah_ , a touch inefficient. Generate a lot of heat. Used to be I was warm all over, but I lose a lot of it out of my neck and hand. Can't really keep it in without any insulation.”

“Makes sense,” Nate said. “Feels nice, too. I think I've been missing out—clearly I need to start abusing my Minuteman-ly powers and force you to be my pillow on cold nights.”

He couldn't help but give a shaky little laugh at that; he watched Nate watch him as his skin shifted with the release of air. “I'll have to report you to Preston. Or Piper. Power's gone and corrupted the head of the Minutemen once again.”

“Story as old as time.”

Nate's eyes were focused intently on the exposed stretch of Nick's body. Nick couldn't help searching his expression for any hint of revulsion or discomfort, but there was nothing in his face except open, honest interest. 

And, well, _interest_. If the original Nick had ever fallen into bed with men, he had no memory of it, but that certainly didn't mean he couldn't recognize lust on a man's face when he saw it.

…Of course, there was also more obvious evidence in the form of Nate's erection, trapped beneath the layers of his cloth-and-leather armor.

“You should let me”—Nick gave one of Nate's hands on a tug, ready to find himself on more familiar ground, but Nate pulled away the moment he realized what Nick intended.

“No way,” he said, giving Nick a positively _evil_ grin. “Fair's fair.”

“Need to report you to the _Railroad_ ,” Nick half-groaned, train of thought thoroughly derailed by that smile, “for cruelty to Synths.”

Nate laughed. “Can't fault a man for wanting some time to properly appreciate the view, can you?”

On the word _view_ his hand slipped up the half-inch needed to press right against that sensor, and all of a sudden Nick could think of nothing else at all.

He gasped as a pleasure so intense it was almost pain sparked through his body. The sensation was electric and wild, every circuit firing in overload and every sensor trying to suddenly register _something_. It had never been this much when he'd tried it on himself.

It was almost enough to make Nick want to laugh—clearly Nate's skill with electronics had a wider application than he'd ever realized.

“Okay,” Nate said, eyes wide and voice thick, “that sounded promising.” His hands slid up slightly further before dipping back down, clearly searching for whatever had inspired that reaction.

When he pressed against it again, Nick let out a noise that sounded more like a sob than anything else. It was too much and not enough all at once; his processors barely knew how to handle this level of input and still he wanted _more_.

“ _There_ we go,” Nate said. His thumb ran lazy circles around the skin that covered the sensor. Teasing. “Talk to me, Nick. How's it feeling?”

“Talk?” Nick managed.

Nate nodded, mock serious, even as his fingers dipped closer to the centerpoint of the sensor once more. “I mean, it's like detective work. I'm just the Watson to your Holmes here—you're the one who knows what works best.”

Nick pressed his eyes shut for a brief moment, letting the dizzying rush of pleasure pulse through him once more.

“For example,” Nate continued, “I'm thinking that if there's something nice _here_ ”—his hand stroked once more along the center of the sensor—“it might just have a match.”

Quickly, he ran his other hand up to press against the right side of Nick's chest, just below where his ribcage would start if he had one. Both hands slid simultaneously over his body: the right pressed against the spot Nate had already found, while the left brushed against that sensor's twin on the other side of his body.

The sound Nick made wasn't even human. He clung tight to Nate's body, desperate for something to ground him as a dizzying shock of desire through him.

A soft little grunt brought him back to the present, and he realized with horror that he'd dug his metal fingers into the skin at Nate's shoulder joint tight enough to bruise.

“Sorry,” he said, pulling his hand back like he'd been burned. 

Nate just laughed, breathless. “Don't worry about it. Any man who looks as good as you do is welcome to wrap his hands around my throat whenever he wants.”

There was something he ought to protest in that sentence, but Nick was too busy to think of what it might be.

To his credit, Nate was… well, he was _excellent_. Rather than focusing on the spots he'd already found or sticking to the points that might have been erogenous on a more human Synth—his groin, the place where his nipples would have been, the join of his still-clothed thighs—his hands wandered across every inch of Nick's exposed body with a strange sort of enthusiastic curiosity. Every time those mapping fingers wrung another noise out of Nick, his smile grew sharper and his eyes more intense. 

There were so many spots that got a reaction. Half of them Nick hadn't even known about before now. A slight dip near his collar where neck and torso joined left him momentarily breathless; the skin near his hips was more sensitive than he could have ever imagined. Even his metal hand, the part of his body with the least feeling of all, left him surprised—the sudden change in temperature when Nate briefly laced his warm fingers around Nick's facsimiles sent a shudder down his spine.

All of this was nothing at all like what he remembered from the original Nick, and all the better for it.

 _Mine_ , Nick thought, _this is mine_. Never mind what sensations he could or couldn't recreate—this was a feeling the original would never have been able to know. This was a _man_ the original never could have hoped to know. 

“Nate,” he said, desperate and longing, arching into every soft touch. “Nate, _please_.”

One of Nate's hands had found its way back to the spot he'd first discovered and the other was tracing a lazy path up and down his side. The constantly-shifting contact was enough to leave him aching with desperate sensation, but not quite enough to send him over the edge.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Nate sounded near out of breath; when Nick managed to focus his gaze a little better, he could see Nate's hips rocking back and forth in miniscule, desperate motions as he pressed his hands against Nick. Just the sight was enough to send another coil of heat surging through him. “Come on, Nick. I've got you.”

With that, he leaned in and kissed the largest of the three scars running down Nick's chest, flicking his tongue out to press warmly against the makeshift stitches there. The tug of the line ignited a dozen prickling points of stimulus, the drag of Nate's mouth sent sparks arcing through him, and he was—he was _gone_.

It was all he could to to clutch at Nate as a wave of intensity and pleasure tore through him, leaving him wrung out and gasping. Spots swam in front of his eyes. His metal joints flexed entirely without conscious thought. He knew he was babbling something—pleading or moaning or just crying out Nate's name, he didn't know—and his whole body shuddered like it wanted to come apart from the sensation.

For a moment, the feeling was all he could process. There was nothing around him, nothing to him, nothing that he could take in over the overwhelming rush of physical feedback.

The original Nick's memories had told him coming would be a quick, sudden thing, over as soon as it happened. He should have known by now that he couldn't trust any of that to apply to this body of his: sensation returned slowly, one piece at a time, as the overwhelming pleasure slowly abated. The first thing he became aware of was Nate's hand on his leg, rubbing slowly back and forth across his still-clothed thigh. There weren't any sensitive spots there, but the touch itself was comforting. It helped ground him. 

A few seconds more and his body began to feel like itself again. There was a lingering sensation of… _something_ , satisfaction or exhaustion or both, buried deep in his circuitry, but it wasn't unpleasant. Nick flexed his fingers and let out a deep sigh.

“God,” Nate said. “God, Nick, you looked _incredible_ —”

His voice caught on a little moan, and Nick realized he was still hard. He was stroking himself off with one hand, cock caught between his clothes and the flat plane of his stomach. 

Almost without thinking, Nick reached out with his metal hand and tangled his skeletal fingers in Nate's hair. He gave a little tug, just enough so Nate would be able to feel it, and said, “I'm watching.”

“ _Fuck_ , Nate hissed, and came into his hand with a bitten-off little cry.

Nick took it all in with a sense of slightly awed disbelief. He'd started out this afternoon expecting Nate to end the fragile thing between them, and instead he had—well, he had Nate, kneeling on his office's floor, panting and open and as vulnerable as Nick had ever seen him. It was very nearly harder to wrap his mind around than everything that had come before it.

( _Almost_. He still couldn't quite believe he'd done any of that, that he was even capable of any of that.)

Nate slid his free hand away from Nick's leg to pull out a small length of cloth and wipe his fingers clean. It was such a small thing and yet so very _him_ that Nick couldn't help but laugh.

“Always prepared, huh?”

“I learned from the best. Never let anything take you unawares, and all that.” 

“Well,” Nick said, “I'm sure I can think of a few things I wasn't expecting.”

At that, Nate's cheeks went red and he leaned against Nick's legs. There were so many details that Nick wanted to capture and store away: the rise and fall of his chest as he tried to catch his breath, the weight of his body against Nick, the warmth in his dark eyes as he looked at him.

“Not an unpleasant surprise, I hope.” 

“You kidding?” Nick asked, barely able to keep the incredulity from his voice. “Furthest thing from, I promise you. This was…” Something he didn't have words for. Something he could barely even accept as real.

“Nice,” he finally finished.

He expected Nate to laugh at his underwhelming choice of words—Piper would have had his head for it if she could hear him now, he was sure—but he just let out a deep sigh. 

“Good,” he said, “good. I wasn't sure—”

“Whether or not I'd be interested in the attentions of a handsome, clever fellow who's saved my life more than once?”

“Shut up,” Nate said, glaring lazily up at him. “It's not as if you made it easy to tell.” His gaze dropped to the ground and he rubbed at his temple self-consciously. “I wasn't sure if you were… I don't know. Humoring me, or something. I'm not exactly the subtlest person, _Mr. Detective_.”

 _Oh,_ Nick thought. 

“Well, apparently I need to work on those skills a little if I want to keep my title. I'm not careful, some upstart private eye's going to show me up and run me out of town.” He ran a hand through Nate's hair once more, this time with the flesh hand. He could appreciate the texture better that way, take stock of the way it tugged slightly at his fingers as they pulled through.

“Let me know if anyone tries. I'll duel them for your honor.” Nate raised one hand and shot an imaginary gun with his index finger pointed outward. Bit of an unnecessary gesture, given that he had a good three or four real ones strapped to various places on his body, but it was probably safer that way.

“You keep on saving me and I'm _really_ going to owe you.”

Nate laughed. “Well, I can think of one way you can pay off your tab.” He twisted around to look at Nick properly, then rested his chin on a point just above Nick's knee. “With full knowledge that I'm doing this entirely backwards—Nick, would you care to join me for dinner and cigarettes tomorrow night?”

It was hardly a question; they already spent most evenings together whenever Nate was in town. Nate would have a bowl of Takahashi's noodles and Nick would smoke a cigarette and watch the way his mouth moved when he ate. The implication of it, though, was more than enough to send a surge of phantom warm through Nick's body as if all his cooling fans had failed at once.

He didn't know what he could have possibly done to deserve this, but he wasn't about to complain.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Nick said, and pulled Nate upwards into one more kiss.


End file.
